Binge and Cinderella's day trip to Coniston ( a case of marital coercion?)

Cinderella showing off his dryrobe

I'm not quite sure how he managed it but my better half, (shown here resplendent in his dryrobe, (or so he thinks)) somehow persuaded me to enter the Epic Swim in Coniston today. (Now I know how Vicky Pryce felt!)

He was planning to swim the 3.8k but a nasty cough and a 3.8k swim yesterday left him dropping down to join me in the 1 mile event and meant we didn't have to arrive there in the middle of the night for a 9 am kick off.

At an alleged 12.5°c it felt positively tropical compared to last week's efforts! see here The water was also much clearer although just a bit busier as I tried to avoid the scrum in the middle by hanging to the right of the course.

I navigated the majority of the course without too much difficulty, although a couple of the buoys were a bit too far apart for my challenged vision.

That is until the end; there I was swimming at the back of a little group when Mr competitor started to whisper in my ear. I began to gently kick and pull a bit harder and i started to ease past the group just as we approached the buoy, I turned a tight 90° around the buoy and then really started to kick and pick up my stroke cadence, clear water and I was confident I had left my group in my wake when I crashed into a safety canoe, who kindly pointed out that I had turned too early and sojourned some 50 metres across the lake when I shouldn't have turned until the next buoy. Bu**er!

Despite this mishap I really enjoyed the swim (apart from walking over the stoney beach with frozen and numb feet). Bob arrived 5 minutes or so behind me, minus one wetsuit bootie. It had fallen off during the swim, and he'd turned around to catch it then he'd given it to a safety canoe to nurse back to the finish for him.

Needless to say we had to hang around till everyone had finished waiting for Bob's Prince Charming to arrive, hoping upon hope that the car wouldn't have turned into a pumpkin by the time we returned to the car park, and our matching dryrobes wouldn't be mistaken for royal robes, (they did garner a fair number of approving comments!)

Anyway a great day out, though all the better for bumping into Masters swimmers Judy Brown from Warrington who completed the 3.8k, Paul Urwin who I last saw in Riccione in 2013 and Nicky Parkes and I bumped into a fair number of Tossers Paul Bowman and Tony Greener to mention 2. Bring on the Utterly Buttermere 5k next week.